Agricultural and Ecological Resources Safeguarded by the Prevention of Wild Pig Population Expansion

Authors

Colin Jareb, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Kim M. Pepin, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Ryan S. Miller, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Veterinary Services, Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Stephanie A. Shwiff, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Sophie C. McKee, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow

ORCID IDs

Jareb https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6859-3242

Miller https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3892-0251

McKee https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2283-4191

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2024

Citation

MDPI Biology (2024) 13: 670

doi: 10.3390/biology13090670

Academic editors: Andrés Moya and Xubin Pan

Comments

United States government work

Abstract

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are one of the most destructive invasive species in the United States, known for causing extensive damage to agricultural commodities, natural resources, and property, and for transmitting diseases to livestock. Following the establishment of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program (NFSDMP) in 2014, the expansion of wild pig populations has been successfully slowed. This paper combines two modeling approaches across eight separate models to characterize the expansion of wild pig populations in the absence of intervention by the NFSDMP and forecasts the value of a subset of resources safeguarded from the threat of wild pigs. The results indicate that if wild pigs had continued spreading at pre-program levels, they would have spread extensively across the US, with significant geographic variation across modeling scenarios. Further, by averting the threat of wild pigs, a substantial amount of crops, land, property, and livestock was safeguarded by the NFSDMP. Cumulatively, between 2014 and 2021, wild pig populations were prevented from spreading to an average of 724 counties and an average of USD 40.2 billion in field crops, pasture, grasses, and hay was safeguarded. The results demonstrate that intervention by the NFSDMP has delivered significant ecological and economic benefits that were not previously known.